Begrüßung verlassener Stadt

Kapitel 2

Cuihua looked again carefully, then gently tapped her son's head and said, "Are your eyes playing tricks on you? Not at all!"

The son muttered, "It's definitely there! It is!"

"Okay, okay, I'll have your dad give you a good wash later." Cuihua said to her son, "There's a power outage today, so don't do your homework, or you'll hurt your eyes. Go to bed early after dinner, okay!" She winked at Zhang Yongwang.

The son was very obedient; he went to bed after finishing his meal. Cuihua was in the kitchen clearing away the dishes when Zhang Yongwang carefully washed his face, brushed his teeth, and washed his feet. Then, he went outside, splashed the water outside the door, and shouted into the kitchen as he passed by, "Hurry up, I'm done washing!"

---janeadam

Reply [6]: The couple lay on the bed chatting, looking at their son on the other bed in the room. When he started breathing evenly, the couple began to caress each other and kiss each other. Finally, Zhang Yongwang got up and covered Cuihua. Cuihua hugged her husband tightly with one hand and covered her mouth tightly with the other, breathing rapidly through her nose. The bed creaked under the weight, the sound clear in the empty and quiet night. The son, who was not yet asleep, was awakened and said in a daze, "Mom, there are mice."

The couple were startled. Cuihua released her hand from her mouth and said, "No way! Go to sleep!"

After a moment of silence, their son turned over and whimpered as he fell asleep. The couple exchanged a smile, and Zhang Yongwang's restless desire returned.

“Listen to me, listen to me!” the son shouted again.

Zhang Yongwang rolled over in frustration, his hands behind his head. Cuihua, still wanting more, lay on his chest, gently touching him, trying to rekindle his desire. However, Zhang Yongwang had already lost interest and remained unresponsive for a long time. Cuihua sighed helplessly, pulled her hand up from under him, and stroked his face, saying, "When you have money, we'll get a new bed."

“Bed board, bed board…” Zhang Yongwang pondered, then suddenly thought of something, “That can also be used as a bed board, right? Yes, it’s big and flat, and it’s a single piece. It hasn’t rotted in all these years, so it must be good material.” He got out of bed, put on his clothes, and told Cuihua, “I’m going out for a bit, don’t lock the door.”

"Where are you going so late?" Cuihua asked in surprise as she sat up from under the covers.

"Don't ask anymore, you'll find out in a little while." Zhang Yongwang stood at the door and turned back to smile at Cuihua. In the hazy moonlight, Cuihua suddenly noticed that there really was a patch of black between Zhang Yongwang's eyebrows.

Under the cover of night, Zhang Yongwang quietly arrived at the dark construction site. Only a single kerosene lamp hung from the morgue, casting a cold, dim yellow light in the darkness. Zhang Yongwang tried to avoid the morgue, not wanting to be seen. He quickened his pace, glancing at the morgue as he did so, but suddenly bumped into someone, his heart leaping into his throat.

An old man stared at him coldly, his face as withered as Wang Tiegen, who had just died during the day.

Zhang Yongwang suppressed his wildly beating heart, cleared his throat, and struck up a conversation with the other person: "Still not asleep?"

The old man sized him up: "What are you doing here?"

"I just couldn't sleep, so I came out for a walk."

"What's the point of improvement? It's just ruins. Go home and get some sleep. The time between noon and midnight is when the gates of hell are wide open. Be careful not to lose your soul." After saying this, the old man turned and walked towards the shed, his figure leaving a long, desolate trail on the ground.

---janeadam

Reply [7]: Zhang Yongwang hummed in agreement, but his feet didn't move. He watched the old man return to the morgue, then hurried a few steps to the spot where the grave had been dug during the day. He picked up a shovel from the ground and, using the distant lamplight, began digging in the direction he remembered. The soil was loose because it hadn't been compacted when everyone buried it during the day, and soon the coffin reappeared. Zhang Yongwang jumped down, pulled off the coffin lid, and peered at the ground—there was no one there. Under the cover of darkness, he carried the coffin lid and tiptoed, trying not to make a loud noise. Suddenly, he heard the old man calling from behind. In his haste, Zhang Yongwang didn't care about anything else and fled the construction site.

After parting ways with Zhang Yongwang, the old man returned to the morgue. Under the dim light, Wang Tiegen's body lay stiffly, a bottle of liquor and a small bag of peanuts given to him by the command post beside him. The old man was a local bachelor. According to local custom, the living must keep watch for the deceased for the first seven nights, but Wang Tiegen's home was too far from the county town, and his family couldn't arrive immediately. The remaining family members passed the buck, none of them willing to do it. Left with no other option, the command post gave the old man a few yuan to keep watch that night. Poverty makes one weak-willed, and a thin horse has a long mane. The old man was initially unwilling, but for the sake of the few yuan, he agreed.

The old man sat on the ground, reached for the wine bottle, took a swig from the bottle opening, and then picked up a few peanuts to chew on. He hummed a line from the Jin opera "The Trial of the Ghost": "This whip of mine can strike ten reincarnated true emperors above, and lash out at the nine kings of hell below—" He seemed quite pleased with himself. He reached for the peanuts, but instead grabbed something strange from the plastic bag. The old man examined it with a puzzled expression.

It was a dark red piece, about the size of a steamed bun, but without the softness and chewiness of a bun. Squeezing it, it felt more like the firmness of meat. The old man sniffed it; there was no strange smell, but he couldn't identify what kind of meat it was either. "Sigh, what good stuff can these construction workers make? They've wasted this piece of meat," the old man thought, taking a big bite. The meat was like dried, cured meat, difficult to chew. "I must say, it tastes pretty good. If the seasonings could be fully absorbed, it would be even better," the old man thought. But when he looked at the cross-section of the meat, he was startled. The outside was dark red, but the inside was white and smooth like tofu, completely lacking the animal fibers and fibrous texture that meat should have. "Could it be a piece of fried tofu? No way, fried tofu shouldn't be this hard." The old man pondered, his gaze falling on the zombie lying there. Remembering what had happened that day, he looked down at the piece of meat more closely, and an ancient legend suddenly flashed into his mind. His eyes widened in terror, and the piece of meat fell from his hand to the ground. He bent over and reached down to gag his throat, trying to vomit up what he had just eaten.

It's too late!!!

The old man's abdomen swelled rapidly, as if something was growing inside, his belly bulging like a ball. Unable to bend over, he frantically ripped open his shirt, revealing clearly visible veins on his bulging belly. The skin was almost transparent from the swelling, and the organs inside were vaguely visible. With a "pop," the old man's belly burst open, and his internal organs gushed out like waves, dragging across the ground. The old man stared incredulously at his hanging organs and screamed.

This was the sound Zhang Yongwang heard as he stole the coffin lid and was furtively leaving the construction site. If he had listened more carefully then, he would have realized the old man wasn't calling him. If he had run over to see what was wrong, things might not have turned out so tragically; at least he himself might not have died.

---janeadam

Reply [8]: If------suppose------maybe-------? What a pity!

Zhang Yongwang, carrying the coffin lid on his back, jogged into his courtyard and closed the gate behind him. He tiptoed into the house. Cuihua, still awake, saw the plank on his back and asked in surprise, "What's this? Where did it come from?"

"Get down, get down!" Zhang Yongwang urged Cuihua to get out of bed without waiting for a reply. The couple moved all the bedding off the iron-framed bed and removed the bed board. They busied themselves putting the new board on top. The board was a little longer than the original bed, but luckily the bed was adjustable. After the bedding was remade and the couple lay down together, Zhang Yongwang finally told Cuihua about the board's origin.

Upon hearing this, Cuihua sat up abruptly, exclaiming in alarm, "Why did you bring back such an unlucky thing? Take it back quickly! I dare not sleep on this thing!"

Zhang Yongwang put his arm around his wife's shoulder, pulling her back into his embrace. He stroked her back and said, "It's alright. It's just been buried underground for a few years. If I hadn't told you, would you have known? Many families around here don't have beds. The children are sleeping on the coffins their grandparents prepared. Many people still have their food stored inside."

Cuihua twisted her body forcefully and said, "No, you have to put it back. Wang Tiegen died there today, this thing is evil!"

"What are you afraid of? It's nothing. If something had happened, how come I didn't die on the way back?" Seeing Cuihua's persistent attitude, Zhang Yongwang rolled his eyes and said, "Besides, a good bed board costs several dollars. When we have the money, we'll buy a bed board and then I'll throw this one away, okay?"

When money was mentioned, Cuihua fell silent. Yes, in this chaotic era, saving so much money to buy a bed board was a luxury, even just thinking about it. Having a decent board was a blessing if the couple could sleep without disturbing their son. A family nearby, afraid their child would hear them doing their business, gave him sleeping pills, which resulted in the child becoming mentally disabled.

When Zhang Yongwang saw that his wife was silent, he knew she was tempted.

...200 words deleted here

What?

Cuihua's two legs were tightly wrapped around his waist, while the legs that had been rubbing his legs and tickling his soles were two other legs. They gleamed with a white, eerie light in the darkness.

---janeadam

Reply [9]: "Whose legs are these?" Zhang Yongwang was startled, and his enthusiasm vanished instantly. He knelt up and looked in the direction of the two legs. Only then did he realize that they were not legs, but two snow-white objects. What were they? Zhang Yongwang reached out to touch them. The objects suddenly stood up, like a person without an upper body standing on the bed. Cuihua woke up from her pleasure, opened her eyes and saw this scene, and cried out "Ah!"

Only then did Zhang Yongwang vaguely see that the two objects had actually "emerged" from the "bed board." He reached out again to grab them.

In an instant, countless snow-white, strip-like objects emerged from the "bed board," waving in the air like thousands of ropes, then tightly coiling around the couple who had just been blissfully happy, tightening and tightening. Their eyes bulged and tongues lolled out, veins bulged across their faces, and their joints cracked with a series of snapping sounds. More and more of these objects appeared, layer upon layer binding them tightly, quickly obscuring their terrified faces and gasps.

Zhang Yongwang's son was awakened by the shouts and timidly called out, "Mommy, Mommy, Daddy, Daddy." When he heard no answer, the child started to cry.

---janeadam

Reply [10]: (II)

The fear spread faster than the plague itself; almost everyone, the moment they awoke, sensed the overwhelming atmosphere of panic in the city.

In a single day and night, four living people died mysteriously. No one knew the reason. When Wang Tiegen died, hundreds of people witnessed his death, seemingly sharing some of the fear. However, the mysterious deaths of the old man in the morgue and Zhang Yongwang and his wife deepened people's fear of the whole incident. Wang Tiegen's body was already extremely gruesome, but compared to the three people who died that night, he was actually lucky—after all, he was at least a whole corpse. The first person to discover the old man's body was still vomiting, and everyone who saw the old man's body couldn't help but cover their mouths. The old man's abdomen looked as if it had been scooped out with a large, sharp-edged spoon; his internal organs were scattered all over the ground, and even vertebrae were visible. As for Zhang Yongwang and his wife, they lay on the bed like a pile of minced meat; except for their skulls, their bodies were completely broken into fragments. The people carrying the bodies couldn't do anything about it, and they didn't dare to separate the two bodies for fear of them falling apart. In the end, they could only carry them in a blanket by several people. When they went out, one of them tripped over the door frame and an eyeball rolled out from the corner of the blanket. One of the more timid people collapsed to the ground because his legs went weak and he still can't speak.

No one wanted to work, and the construction site was deserted. In the makeshift morgue, Liu Jianjun squatted beside three piles of corpses, carefully observing them.

He was a policeman from the county's Public Security Bureau, and he received orders to go to the scene this morning. Because of the gruesome nature of the scene, no one wanted to approach it, and the scene was well-preserved. However, not a single trace of crime could be found at the entire scene. Beside the old man, besides the already deceased Wang Tiegen, there were no other signs of life. If it weren't for the bizarre manner of his death, it would have been ruled a suicide long ago. The deaths of Zhang Yongwang and his wife were clearly beyond human capability; who could torment two living people like wringing out a bed sheet? Faced with such a strange event, the police were powerless. They quickly collected samples, took photos, conducted an investigation, took statements, and gathered evidence before leaving. Liu Jianjun, however, was not a pure materialist, and out of curiosity, he remained to observe, trying his best to figure out the truth of the matter.

Liu Jianjun gently lifted the tarpaulin covering the old man. Even though he'd seen it countless times, he still unconsciously frowned. In his nearly ten years as a police officer, he'd witnessed hundreds of murder scenes, but none had been as chilling as this. Except for his abdomen, the old man's entire body was intact. The wound on his abdomen was shaped like a giant star, as if the old man had swallowed a grenade that had exploded in his abdomen. But who would swallow a grenade? This method of suicide was too incomprehensible! He shook his head, his gaze falling on the old man's mouth, thinking, "Even with that method, he couldn't have swallowed it! --------?!?"

A flash of white light appeared in the old man's mouth.

Liu Jianjun stepped forward, half-kneeling beside the old man. He took out gloves and put them on, while simultaneously taking a small pair of tweezers from his toolbox. He calmed himself down, pried open the old man's mouth with one hand, and with the other hand, carefully inserted the tweezers into the old man's mouth to remove the reflective object.